Mark Nicholas Brady

My name's Mark and I've been playing guitar since I was 12 (I forget how to calculate the years, but let's say I started a couple decades after the British invasion [the rock 'n roll one] and a few years before the Seattle invasion of the early 90s). 

My earliest experience with guitar came in Chicago in the 80s, when a friend and I went in on a 2-for-1 deal on a pair of Dean electric guitars from a music shop downtown. My grandparents bought me a little Peavey solid state amp that I cranked to the max and we spent countless hours trying to learn Iron Maiden, Van Halen and Metallica riffs to the consternation of the neighborhood (or at least my household). 

Luckily they put up with me (thank you!) and when we moved to Florida in 1989, I found my first teacher, Jim Hagadone (who at the time went by the pseudonym Charon James in his band Halifaxx, or Crucifixx or something... two 'xx's for sure). 

Jim was amazing. He was sitting on a stool playing the "Flintsones" theme way up on the maple neck of a black and fluorescent pink Charvel and it sounded so metal that I just walked up and asked "Do you teach guitar?" 

We spent the next two years with weekly lessons at the shop in Clearwater then at his mom's place then his own apartment, surrounded by records by Cream, Hendrix, Zappa, Blondie, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Budgie, Black Sabbath and countless other hard rock and proto metal bands. 

Lesson-wise, it was all about technique and theory in the context of real songs, chord progressions and solos. The education was amazing. It was fun. It's what I strive to bring to all my students , recordings and performances. 

When Jim left for Los Angeles to pursue the dream of rocking out and getting signed on the scene in Hollywood and LA, he recommended me to the late Ralph Santolla, who had just returned from California to Florida after graduating from the famed Musician's Institute. 

Ralph only took new students on recommendation, so I was super lucky to get on board. I took these lessons very seriously. Ralph was super-focused on music theory and guitar technique (bends, slides, trills, two-hand tapping, vibrato). He was (and became even better) known as a thrash and death metal shred guitar hero, but his tone and technique were to die for, in styles ranging from neoclassical to straight-up electric blues. He was a true inspiration and I was heartbroken to hear he had passed on June 7, 2018. 

I used to go to a lot of concerts at an outdoor venue in St. Petersburg, Florida called Janus Landing. I was there to see Steve Morse (of the Dixie Dregs, Kansas, and countless amazing solo albums). 

There was an indoor venue connected to Janus Landing and a guy was in there playing a Taylor acoustic and telling stories. It turns out this was Richard Gilewitz, a student and friend of Leo Kottke and an absolute bedazzaler on guitar. His fingerpicking was so ornate yet so rustic, almost old-fashioned, like that old piano style from 1880s Tombstone or something. 

But Richard's storytelling captivated me, too. He talked about fingernails, for example. "I need to keep my nails strong," he said. "But they break all the time. They crack. I was thinking about this one night while I was eating corn flakes. Then I went to bed. I woke up the next morning, and my cereal bowl had these flakes hardened to it. Like cement. They would not break. So I thought... 'if I put a drop of milk on my fingertip, and put a corn flake on it, .....'